One of the biggest developments in February was, well, bigness. Our
ranks grew with a swell of new members in 2008, and with 36 active members,
the IIG is now as large as it’s ever been. We have photographic proof
(from our February meeting).

Here’s the latest:

LONG ISLAND HEALER

Bob T. from New York still wants to give a demonstration of his healing
powers, but he hardly accepts a controlled environment:

I was recently at the local Bally's and I worked with a fellow who had a
cherry red, itchy red scally [sic] 2 by 3 patches near his elbows on
both arms. I placed the palm of my right hand an inch away from his
arm; and the itch, that was an 8 on a scale of one to ten; was a 0 in a few
seconds[.] Imediately [sic] the itch was gone, and both patches faded
to the point of 70-80% gone in a few minutes time. Cherry red to a
pink color on one arm, and a pink, red color on the other. I saw him a
week later, and there was no trace, his skin looker [sic] normal; and both
patches were gone; and the symtoms [sic] never returned. If I was to
produce a video that was OBVIOUS [emphasis his]; would your organization
except that?

IIG Chair Jim Underdown made it unambiguously clear that while such a
videotape would be instructive, a live demonstration would be necessary to
qualify for the challenge. We await Bob T.’s response.

Speaking of Bobs, CFI-LA’s own Bob Ladendorf has recovered from his
broken hand. Bob T. had originally offered to psychically heal Bob
L.’s hand several months ago, but since the healing happened on a normal
timeline, this too will not qualify for the challenge.

For those of you who lack the intestinal fortitude to parse Horn’s
convoluted comments, here is a summary. Derek B. claims that the tree
in Billy Meier’s 1970’s films and video is a model simply because the
evidence suggests that it is THE SAME TREE in different locations. If
the tree is a model, then the UFOs are also models, and therefore more
likely to be the garbage can lids that they resemble, rather than advanced,
faster than light vehicles of extraterrestrial origin. Occam’s razor,
anyone?

Michael Horn also has a tendency to quote people as being favorable to
the Billy Meier case, but when Derek B. contacted several of the people
quoted it turns out that Michael Horn misquoted them. Here is an
example.
In the recent DVD "The Silent Revolution Of Truth" Michael Horn makes the
following statement:

"Six professors of forestry looked at Meier's photos and looked at the trees
and each one determined that the trees are full size mature trees and not
models."

The names of the forestry professors are then displayed on-screen for the
viewer.

Here is Professor Edward C. Jensen’s response:

"An estimate of tree height (actually only the top portion of a single
particular tree) that I made several years ago in good faith has been taken
out of context and misused to purport things that I did not intend.
Further, my observations have been misappropriated and misapplied to
photographs that I have never seen and situations that I have never
reviewed. I want to assure you that I have never purported to
authenticate any photos of alleged UFOs for Mr. Deardorff, Mr. Meier, Mr. Horn, or anyone else. Nor have I ever
purported to determine the authenticity of any trees in any photos of
alleged UFOs for anyone."

Nick Nelson of Montana (www.goldenvortex.com)
has applied for the $50,000 claiming that his “Golden Vortex” will alter the
appearance of himself in relationship to an objective observer. The
development of a testing protocol is very complicated, but we are on the
case. Nelson has agreed to fly out to L.A., so this may happen soon.

VISION FROM FEELING

Anita Ikonen of “Vision From Feeling” is an applicant for the IIG $50,000
paranormal challenge. She claims to “to know about the health
condition of people” with her “extrasensory perception,” and she has been
keeping her own monthly updates at
http://www.visionfromfeeling.com/challenge.html.

The biggest stumbling block in the design of this test is coming up with
verifiable, and unambiguous “conditions” for her to diagnose. We
selected the three least ambiguous categories from her list of claimed
abilities <http://visionfromfeeling.com/page3.html>:

Missing teeth.

Abnormal skeletal structure.

Eyesight (specific, and independent results for each eye, with a
percentage of accuracy to be agreed upon).

Mark Z from north of the border claims that he will predict the winning
numbers in the Canadian Lottery. He has sent in a formal application,
and we are trying to calculate the odds of him doing this by chance before
we accept his testing protocol. In meantime, the IIG Steering Committee
wonders what he wants with our $50,000 if he can win the lottery.

WEBSITE UPDATES

There were some exciting new IIG website updates in February. Check
out our updated links page, our new Google-powered
search functionality (see the upper-right corner of the page), a
2005 interview
with IIG members on Rick Wood's Audiomartini show, an updated paranormal
challenge form, and Jim Underdown's article in Skeptical Inquirer (see
above). You may also notice a few visual improvements here and there. Also,
the IIG now has a page on
Wikipedia! That's right, we're legit now.